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Roush's resilience shows again

After his miraculous survival following a plane crash, car owner Jack Roush has recovered rapidly and retained his sense of humor.

By JOANNE KORTH, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published April 27, 2002

Gazing out the glass door of his team hauler, Jeff Burton speculated about the day owner Jack Roush, nearly killed last weekend in a small airplane crash, would return to the Winston Cup garage.

Burton grinned.

"I have visions of this home-built wheelchair," said Burton, driver of Roush Racing's No. 99 Ford. "And he would push it himself, roll it with his own hands, before he let somebody else push him. If it's hard and ugly and difficult, he wants a part of it."

Roush, 60, known throughout NASCAR as "the cat in the hat" for his trademark Panama hat, is a hands-on owner who built a motorsports empire one wrench turn at a time.

He was critically injured April19 when the light aircraft he was piloting hit a power line and flipped into a lake in south Alabama. But, one medical update at a time, the world got a glimpse last week of the resolve Roush's friends say is his true trademark.

Roush, who remains in a Birmingham hospital, was upgraded Friday to satisfactory condition and moved to a private room. Doctors say he could go home to Michigan as early as next week.

"He has had to work incredibly hard against giant odds to become successful," said Mark Martin, who has 32 victories in 15 seasons driving Roush's No. 6 Ford. "He identifies with people who want it really bad and deserve an opportunity. He likes the underdogs who are willing to work hard and fight hard like he has had to."

Roush is an enigma: a billionaire with a reputation for being cheap, an intellectual who uses $10 words in a sport founded by good ol' boys, an engineering innovator with a passion for vintage airplanes. Few know the real Roush.

"Most people look at him as an engineer, businessman, disciplinarian," said Burton, who has 17 wins in his seventh season with Roush. "Everything that I know about Jack is different than his stereotype. He's a racer. Every decision he makes, he bases on what will give us our best chance to win.

"We don't have the prettiest trailers. We don't have the prettiest shop. We have very functional stuff that wins races. He puts every dime back into the race program. That goes back to his upbringing. He's self-made. He didn't have anything when he started."

A Michigan native, Roush got a master's degree in scientific mathematics from Eastern Michigan in 1970, but quit his job at Ford to build equipment for a group of local drag racers called the "Fastbacks." His reputation as a top performance engineer kept him busy building engines for teams in other sports.

Today, Roush Industries employs more than 1,800 people with facilities in five states, plus Mexico and Great Britain. One of three subsidiaries, Roush Racing has eight teams competing in NASCAR's top three divisions: four in Winston Cup, two in Busch Grand National and two in Craftsman Truck.

Head of a billion-dollar company, Roush loves to tinker. He owns three World War II fighter planes, P-51 Mustangs, and tunes the massive engines himself. It's not unusual to stroll through the Winston Cup garage and catch Roush up to his elbows in Burton's carburetor.

But it will be a while.

Roush was celebrating his 60th birthday with friends by piloting different aircraft when the twin-engine Air Cam, designed by the National Geographic Society to shoot aerial photography, crashed into a residential neighborhood in Troy, Ala.

Roush had no passengers.

Luckily for Roush, Larry Hicks saw it happen. Hicks, a 52-year-old retired Marine trained in search and rescue, jumped into his boat and steered toward the upside-down wreckage. He dove three times before locating Roush, releasing the safety harness and floating him to the surface.

Roush wasn't breathing.

Clinging to the airplane with one arm, Hicks squeezed Roush's chest with the other to remove water from his lungs. Hicks performed CPR, and on the fifth breath Roush responded. Hicks stayed with Roush in the water until emergency personnel arrived.

"What a miracle that is to have your guardian angel 50 yards away right when you've got to have him," Roush Racing president Geoff Smith said of Hicks, a reluctant hero. "I told Larry that he was part of our family now, whether he likes it or not."

Roush sustained a head injury, collapsed lung and multiple fractures of the left leg and ankle. Uncertain whether the head injury occurred at impact or as a result of being submerged for several minutes, doctors worried Roush might have brain damage.

Good news came quickly.

Saturday, Roush was responding to commands and able to withstand surgery on his shattered left leg. By Sunday, he recognized visitors. Monday, he was communicating, though still on a ventilator, by scribbling questions on a notepad faster than Martin could answer.

"We discussed the fear we all had Friday night of possible brain damage," Martin said. "And he wrote, 'A little brain damage can be good.' You have to know him, but that's Jack, 100 percent."

As Roush begins a difficult rehabilitation -- a rod was inserted in the femur and plates and pins on both sides of the ankle -- his teams are committed to continuing the 2002 revival that, after a dismal 2001, has all four Winston Cup drivers ranked among the top 11 in points. Two-time winner Matt Kenseth is second, Bristol winner Kurt Busch fourth, Martin ninth and Burton 11th.

"Situations like that can rally all your guys together," said four-time Winston Cup champion Jeff Gordon, who won the 1997 and '98 titles as owner Rick Hendrick battled leukemia.

"They say, 'Our leader's not here. I wish he was. Let's show him how great a job he's done over the years getting us to this level by what we do now.' ... I know how strong a leader Jack is, and those guys are going to show their true strengths."

So, too, will Roush.

"Jack is going to be back 100 percent," Martin said. "We had a very, very good visit. He wrote on his notepad that we had been through a lot together. I said, 'Yeah, and we're going to go through a lot more, too.' "

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